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So Andy Murray went out and earned himself a knighthood at Wimbledon by beating Novak Djokovic last weekend, achieving the first home-grass win by a British male since Fred Perry in 1936. That’s 77 years if anyone is counting.

Chicago Cubs fans are entitled to wonder, what was all the hurry?

The end of one notable sports drought prompts a review of some long and (mostly) miserable dry spells, although the pain and suffering inflicted by each tends not always to be measured strictly by years.

For instance, Canada went 50 years between gold medals in Olympic men’s hockey, but it didn’t necessarily feel like a half-century because the chance appeared only every four years. It wasn’t like 50 consecutive losing efforts. It didn’t really feel longer when it was happening than, say, the 20-year empty stretch Canadian cities are currently riding when it comes to winning the Stanley Cup.

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The Maple Leafs, of course, own the longest current Stanley Cup drought at 46 years, a humiliation exacerbated by the fact they are among the few teams to not even reach the final in that period. Being technical, the St. Louis Blues haven’t won since their arrival in 1967-68, either, but at least they’ve been to the final.

That lack of championship exposure makes the Cubs’ World Series futility (winless since 1908) even worse; they haven’t been in the damned thing since 1945.

Nobody is throwing a no-hitter like the Cubs, but try telling the fans of certain teams they’re blessed. Like the Kings won an NBA title in 1951, when they played out of Rochester. Since then the franchise has wandered through Cincinnati, Kansas City and Omaha and now Sacramento (and, last month, almost Seattle) without requiring a parade. Try also the Detroit Lions (no titles since 1957) or the Cardinals, who have resided in Chicago, St. Louis and now Arizona without winning a title since 1947. Which was one year before the Cleveland Indians last went all the way.

Mentioning Cleveland brings another category, that being the parched municipality. Cleveland has been without a major sports title since the 1964 Browns. Things are scarcely better in San Diego, which has won nothing large since the Chargers took the AFL title in 1963, around the time anyone began noticing the AFL. Nor can we forget our friends in poor Buffalo, title-less since the Bills’ AFC crown in 1965 and showing a nasty pack of scars (Wide Right, Music City Miracle, No Goal, etc) that can scarcely be expected to have healed.

We think we are hard done by in Toronto because we have been 20 years without anything bigger than a CFL title (Blue Jays in 1992 and ’93), but in the larger picture, it isn’t that gruesome. Hey, Winnipeg has gone 23 years without winning a Grey Cup.

These droughts can be found in almost any sport. We’ve all been lamenting for decades the inability of a Canadian man to win the Canadian Open golf championship (Pat Fletcher was the last in 1954). Looking even closer, if an amateur golfer ever again wins a major championship, he would be the first to do so since Johnny Goodman in 1933. Horse racing fans are constantly enticed by 3-year-old thoroughbreds that win the first two legs of the U.S. Triple Crown, but no horse has swept the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes since Affirmed in 1978.

Fans of English soccer might mention their country hasn’t won a really big international title since the World Cup in 1966, which was a lifetime, or more, ago for most of the population. At least the Brits now have Murray’s milestone to toast while they wait.

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